OXFORD — Ole Miss' defense in the second half, or lack thereof, is creating an alarming trend.

The Rebels (14-7, 4-4 SEC) have lost four games in a row and five of their last six after surging into the Top 25 with ranked wins over Auburn and Mississippi State early in SEC play. Rebounding has certainly been one of Ole Miss' Achilles heels over this stretch, but as Rebels coach Kermit Davis pointed out on his SEC teleconference Monday morning, defense as a whole has been lacking as well.

"No. 1, we’re not guarding the ball like we were earlier," Davis said. "Our defensive field-goal percentage in our wins is way lower. Our second-half defensive field goal percentages in our losses were 52 percent against Mississippi State and 56 percent against Florida. So we’ve got to guard better and we’ve got to guard the ball and our ball-screen defense hasn’t been as good."

It's intuitive to say that Ole Miss' team defense performs better when the Rebels win than when the Rebels lose. Ole Miss opponents are shooting 40.5 percent when the Rebels win this season and 48 percent when the Rebels lose. But if you use Ole Miss' last three losses versus Mississippi State, Florida and Iowa State as your sample, you can see the trend Davis is alluding to. The Bulldogs, Gators and Cyclones respectively shot 48.9 percent from the floor in the first halves of those games but rocketed to 61.8 percent from the floor in the second halves.

Sure, some of those numbers are inflated by Iowa State's unprecedented offensive success when the Cyclones shot 69.1 percent for the game. But if you filter out Iowa State's performance, Mississippi State and Florida still shot twice as well in the second half (54 percent) as they did in the first half (27 percent) of their wins over Ole Miss.

Luckily for Ole Miss, this trend is somewhat new. Even in the Rebels' blowout loss versus Alabama, the Crimson Tide only shot 27.6 percent in the second half en route to a 21-point win. Not all of Ole Miss' losses come because of second-half struggles. And that makes a trend like this an easier one to fix than Ole Miss' rebounding weakness, for example. While Ole Miss has generally been a good second half team this season win or lose, the Rebels' win column has gone the direction of its rebounding more often than not; Ole Miss is 13-2 this year when it wins the rebounding battle but is 1-5 when it loses the rebounding battle.

Still, despite the Rebels' deficiencies in certain areas, Davis isn't too concerned with where his program stands, even coming off a four-game losing streak.

"We were one possession away from Florida and it was a one-possession game versus Mississippi State so we could be sitting here 6-2 and everybody saying we’re in great shape in the league," Davis said. "A lot of teams could say that. So we’re not far off. We’ve just got to get back to having good practices this week."